Accurately documenting the needs of a customer is critical in providing the level of customer service that will ensure repeat business and customer satisfaction. Prior to the use of computers, the written form or sales form was the mechanism by which salespersons noted the specific needs of customers and used to ultimately provision the requested products and/or services. These sales forms were often filled out in the presence of the customer and in many cases witnessed and acknowledged by the customer before any work commenced or any product was delivered. Moreover, the sales form was the basis upon which all other departments such as billing, shipping, and production relied in provisioning and meeting a customer's needs and expectations. A wrong or an ambiguous entry in the sales form often had catastrophic consequences, such as the delivery of incorrect quantities, level of support, or unusable products.
A great deal has changed with the advent of computerized order processing. In today's computerized environment, customer service representatives are able to immediately access a customer's records and create real-time orders for new or additional products or services. Although the computerized creation of these new orders is done in a more efficient and expedited manner, the process of taking orders remains largely unchanged from the days of the printed form wherein customer information was for the most part hand-written. The accuracy of the information provided under such computerized order entry systems is largely dependent upon the accuracy of the information provided by the customer during the ordering process. Under such circumstances, it is no surprise that errors in prior orders are perpetuated under the belief that what was perceived to be correct in a previous order is correct and applicable in the provisioning of subsequent orders.
Moreover, and despite the efficiencies attained by a computerized order processing environment, such order entry systems remain vulnerable to the occasional on-screen entry mistake. In today's hurried environment, mistakes can and do occur more often than may be expected. To minimize these on-screen mistakes, current order managements systems have begun to employ logic checks as criteria before data may be entered as part of a permanent record. Zip codes, for example, are checked for validity when the state of a customer is entered in a record; the area code of a telephone number is checked against known valid area codes. These logic checks have also been used to ensure that the correct type of data is entered in on-screen data fields. For example, fields having been designated as alpha-character fields will only accept alphabetical characters—such as in the first and last name of a customer or a numeric-only field will only accept number characters in a field having numeric attributes, such as a social security number or a cost field. These logic checks have ensured that only logical and expected type data is provided in the ordering process.
Despite these advances, the risk of entering incorrect data which may jeopardize order fulfillment and customer satisfaction remains relatively high for organizations handling orders in high volumes and for organizations seeking to attain a high quality of service. Accordingly, there is a need for an order management method and system which minimizes the propagation of incorrect data and which minimizes the need for re-entry of reusable customer-related data.